Development and Evaluation of Patient Information Leaflets (PIL) Usefulness

A prospective study was conducted to develop, validate and assess the usefulness of the patient information leaflets for selected diseases among the patient population. Flesch readability ease score, Baker Able leaflet design criteria were applied to develop the patient information leaflets. The leaflets were validated for both content and translation. Eligible patients meeting the study criteria were enrolled in the study. Suitably designed knowledge, attitude and practice questionnaire was administered at base line followed by patient education complimented with an information leaflet. After a month, knowledge, attitude and practice questionnaire was administered once again to assess the influence of education and usefulness of patient information leaflets on knowledge, attitude and practice scores. The mean readability score of the information leaflets is 80 and Baker Able leaflet design criteria score is 22. Post education knowledge, attitude and practice scores were significantly (P<0.0001) improved in all the enrolled patients in all disease. The study concludes that patient education complemented with suitably designed information leaflet has greater impact on knowledge, attitude and practice of the patients towards their disease management.

Development, validation and implementation of continuous professional development programmes for community pharmacists

In India, structured continuous professional development modules are not available to update the knowledge and skills of the practicing community pharmacists. A prospective study was designed to develop, validate and implement continuous professional development modules and to assess the impact of training programme on knowledge and skills of community pharmacists. Modules were developed by referring to standard texts and data bases and were validated for the content. The impact of training programme on pharmacists’ knowledge and skills was assessed using suitably designed pre and post training knowledge attitude and practice questionnaires, pre and post training questionnaires for individual continuous professional development training sessions, pre and post training patient counseling skill assessment, blood pressure measurement skill assessment and capillary blood glucose check-up skill assessment check-lists. Data was analyzed by applying suitable statistical methods using InStat version 3.01 statistical software. Fourty eight community pharmacists were enrolled in to the study. A statistically significant (P<0.05) improvement was observed in post training knowledge attitude and practice scores and in post training scores of individual training sessions. A statistically significant (P<0.05) improvement was also observed in post training scores of professional skills such as Patient counseling, capillary blood glucose recording and blood pressure measurement skills. The study findings conclude that continuous training updates the knowledge and skills in practicing the pharmaceutical care in their pharmacies.

Attitudes and behaviors of practicing community pharmacists towards patient counselling

The present study was conducted to assess the attitudes and behaviors of practicing community pharmacists towards patient counselling and use of patient information leaflets in the state of Karnataka. Convenient sampling method was adopted to collect the responses with the help of self-completion questionnaires. A total of 258 practicing community pharmacists in the age group of 22–60 y of both gender with practicing experience of 2-30 y participated in the study. Majority of respondents (80%) agreed that, patient counselling is their professional obligation. About 17% of the respondents mentioned that, they try to give basic information regarding drug usage to the patient. The reasons stated by the pharmacists to provide patient counselling were, professional satisfaction (43%), patients go with satisfaction (32%), observed increase in sales (8%), and also improved patient compliance (7.5%). The major barriers for offering patient counselling were mentioned as pharmacists' inadequate knowledge and confidence (78%), doctor dispensing (72%), no professional fee (56%), poor response from patients (82%), inadequate continuous professional development programs (75%). Many respondents agreed that, patient information leaflets certainly help in counselling but available information leaflets are company generated and prescriber focused. Many respondents found the present continuing professional development module was useful and are interested in weekend workshops to update their professional knowledge (83%). Restrictions on doctor dispensing, legalization of patient counselling, regular continuing professional development programs are the factors observed to motivate the pharmacists to offer patient counselling.

Assessment of prevalence and mortality incidences due to poisoning in a South Indian tertiary care teaching hospital

WHO reports estimate poisoning as one of the most common causes of increased morbidity and mortality rate world-wide. Various agents such as pesticides, drugs have been used for intentional and accidental poisoning in different countries. In the Indian scenario, pesticides are the most commonly used poisoning agents. To assess the prevalence and mortality incidence rate due to various poisoning agents a retrospective and prospective study conducted over a period of nine months in a tertiary care teaching hospital. Retrospective data of poisoning cases was collected from the medical records section and the prospective data of poisoning cases was collected from the emergency and causality departments. A total of 1045 poisoning related admissions were identified during the period January 2005 to September 2008. Among them, 68.40% of cases were due to intentional poisoning and 31.60% were due to accidental poisoning. Of the poisoning related admissions, 84.4% of patients recovered, whereas in 7.6% of cases condition did not improve. Mortality rate was observed 4%. Intentional poisoning was observed more in male population (60.2%) in the age group of 18-29 years. Accidental poisoning was seen more in children in the age group of 1-3 years. Incidence of overall poisoning cases were high due to pesticides (39.5%) followed by medicines (26.1%), household products (22.1%), environmental poisoning (12.1%) and heavy metals (0.2%). It was observed that availability of centralised poison information centre and treatment protocols will improvise poison management practices in tertiary care hospitals by the clinicians.